Body in Towed Car: Missing Woman Found in Trunk 3 Days After Car Towed by Police

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(Photo: Reuters/Carlo Allegri)A police crime scene.

A body has been found in a towed car three days after the vehicle was initially taken away from a crash scene.

Inside the towed wrecked car was the body of a missing North Carolina woman. The body was found three days after a state trooper had ordered it to be towed away from a crash site.

Carolyn Ann Watkins, 62, of Clayton was reported missing by her son after she failed to turn up for work early on Monday.

However, it now turns out that an accident report was filed on Friday by a North Carolina highway patrol trooper called Marlin Williams that described her 2000 Pontiac being found crashed on Friday morning in a deep ditch near Smithfield, which is about 30 miles southeast of Raleigh. According to the report, both air bags were deployed in the car as a result of the accident.

In the report it states: "Note: No driver at the scene of this collision," according to The Associated Press.

The trooper called a local towing company to take the car away for storage. In now appears that the woman's body remained unfound in the trunk of the car for three days until found on Monday evening by a Smithfield police officer searching for clues about her disappearance.

Watkins was last seen alive on Thursday, according to police reports, but it is unclear when she died exactly.

Her son, Al Parker, has been left distraught at finding out that his mother had been left in the car for days, and he has suspicions about whether she could have been saved if found earlier.

"I'm thinking she could still have been alive," Parker said Tuesday. "How do you not look in the car? When you pulled the car out, how do you not see a body in the car?"

The trooper has now been placed on paid administrative duty pending the outcome of an internal review that will be conducted with help from the State Bureau Investigation.